


Alphabet Soup

by Hectopascal



Category: Gangsta. (Manga)
Genre: Corruption Everywhere, Gen, Poverty, Prostitution, Slavery, Usual Gangsta Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:30:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hectopascal/pseuds/Hectopascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Worick wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t going to ask. He was a hundred percent certain that he didn’t want to know. He wasn’t going to…</p><p>“Nic, what are you doing?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ask

Worick wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t going to ask. He was a hundred percent certain that he didn’t want to know. He wasn’t going to…

“Nic, what are you doing?” Worick sighed. So much for that resolve.

Nicolas blinked, that perplexed look crossing his face, the one that meant he was thinking or planning something in advance. It was stupid, the way he squinted and seemed mildly concussed. Even more stupid was how fond Worick was of it. The confused frown and the rest of Nic’s odd mannerisms in general.

Worick watched Nic’s hands carefully as they moved, graceful and delicate and precise, nothing like his actual voice.

_I don’t understand. Again?_

It was one of their more common phrases. Unfortunately. Nic was getting better at coming across less like a machine with faulty wiring and more as an actual human being, but he still stumbled frequently. Worick needed to rephrase and specify and, because they both needed practice, he sat up to face Nic fully and signed back.

 _Past days_ , Worick explained with a sweeping gesture, _you stay there_. He pointed and Nic tracked the movement with his usual intensity. _Now, you stay here. Why? What change?_

Not quite the eloquent speech he’d been raised to mimic without thinking, but he was improving. They both were. Conversation was possible with dual understanding and input of subject matter. Once they were fluent, Worick assumed smoothness would come more naturally.

 _Sorry_. That was probably the most frequent sign. Worick wished he was surprised. Nic stood, likely intending to move away without any fuss.

“No.”

 _No_. Worick made a slash with his arm. _No problem. No wrong. Only–_ He didn’t remember ever seeing the correct motion for this particular word and let his hands drop, trusting Nic to read his lips instead. “I’m just curious. I don’t mind. You’re fine really.”

 _Okay?_ Worick asked with his hands as Nic slowly sat back down.

Nic’s hands came up, hovered, and then went back down. His voice, when it came, was uncomfortable and rough and flawed. “ **Wa-nted ta‘o wa-t...ch. Ehf ‘ou ne-ee-ded me…** ”

He signed then, just once. Right hand over left, index finger extended. _Kill?_

A shiver ran down Worick’s spine and his chest clenched painfully. He could follow Nic’s train of thought easily now that he knew him. It was never complicated. It always made sense, in a horrible Nicolas kind of way.

Nic wanted to watch Worick with his clients so that if one hurt him, he would be in a position to immediately act. To eliminate the threat to Worick’s person like a good bodyguard should.

Worick felt like crying.

One step forward and then three back. Progress was grueling and painful like pulling teeth and forced him to think hard like few things truly did. But he would keep going, pushing Nic every step of the way if he had to, until his friend believed that he had a right to be his own person and move and live and love under nobody’s power but his own.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. No. Opened his mouth and clearly said, “No.” Made the slashing motion again. _No._

 _You think bad. Yes?_ Worick’s hands moved with deliberate care. _You think gross, ugly, wrong. You want watch. No._

 _No._ Nic signed back, face crumpling, his eyes narrowing, as upset as he was capable of getting. _Them. Bad, gross, ugly, wrong. You. No. You safe. Good. I want you safe._ Nic did the last over again, more vehemently. _I want you safe!_

Worick frowned. He’d push the issue but a woman was giving him the eye and they did have to eat. He stood up, brushing his knees off, and sent her a coy look.

Nic had said, _I want._ No matter the reasoning behind it, he had said it, so Worick would, reluctantly, let this play out.

“Just this once,” he muttered, signing fast and loose. _We try. One. Okay?_

Nic nodded solemnly.

Worick groaned low in his throat and forced a smile onto his face. How badly could this go, really?

*

The answer to that, he discovered, two minutes later, was really fucking badly.

The woman saw Nic’s tags and screamed and it all went rather downhill from there.

He ended up with four stinging cuts on his face, courtesy of the hysterical woman’s nails, and no cash. Nic had unsheathed his sword the second Worick started bleeding and it had, unsurprisingly, done absolutely nothing to improve the situation.

Worick cut his losses and shoved the lady away before things could escalate to complete disaster, kicking her in the shin for good measure because what was _wrong_ with people?

Honestly, when he wasn’t going out of his way to threaten people, Nic looked about as dangerous as a puppy. A small, adorable, underfed puppy. Of course, there was the sword, which didn’t help matters, but Worick hardly noticed it anymore so perhaps he was biased.

While the woman continued to rave about twilights like a complete lunatic, Worick grabbed Nic by the wrist and took off down the street, ignoring the slurs still being hollered after them.

They stopped running five blocks over when Worick was wheezing too hard to breathe.

“So that,” he paused to gasp, pressing a hand to the stitch in his side while Nic watched impassively, having not even broken a sweat, “was a stupid idea. Let’s not do it again, yeah?”

Nic paused, considering, and then nodded.

“Wonderful,” Worick moaned and almost — almost — missed when Nic patted his shoulder lightly.

He smiled. Progress. Voluntary physical contact. Okay, so not a total loss.

Fantastic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know actually nothing about sign language besides the alphabet. The way I choose to interpret Worick and Nic’s early efforts at communication are influenced by my beginner Spanish classes. I could barely string words together in a way that made sense, let alone make it grammatically correct with the proper verb tense. So. Short and to the point was pretty much the only way to go.


	2. Books

Worick’s memory had always been a little strange.

It took him a while to realize it, to eventually come to the conclusion that however his brain was wired, it wasn’t normal. Other people – the staff, the guards, his father – were normal because they were the majority. It was Worick himself who was an outlier.

Thankfully, his deformity was internal and invisible to the naked eye. It wasn’t obvious that there was anything wrong with him if one didn’t pay close attention and because he was the _shamed, illegitimate, despised_ son, of course nobody did.

But while Worick knew that there was definitely something, somewhere, just a tad bit off inside his head, he didn’t know what it was precisely. It irritated him.

So he did what he always had when he discovered a subject on which he was ignorant. He went to the library.

The family library – which Worick was allowed to use because when he was there he was at least out of sight and not getting into trouble – was Worick’s favorite place in the entire house.

The air was always still. Quiet. Calm. It soothed things deep within him that he rarely noticed were ruffled until he entered through its elegantly carved mahogany doors.

The glass windows were clear and smudge free. The sunlight that filtered through the huge panes was warm and softened the imposing bookshelves with their sharp edges into something comforting and familiar.

The carpet that ran from wall to wall was of high quality, a muted beige that didn’t shed fibers on his good pants. There were no chairs as it wasn’t meant to be a space for lounging around in, reading the day away, so Worick sat on the floor and disregarded the message implied by the absence of a proper sitting area, _take what you need and go_.

He stayed as long as he liked. Often that was for hours. Or until a maid came to fetch him for his tutor or his father or meals. Worick couldn’t care less about distractions as long as he could come back – to the stillness, to the quiet, the solitude, and the sprawling worlds and information that he found in books.

There were four thousand seven hundred thirty six books in total.

Of that four thousand seven hundred thirty six, three thousand two hundred fifty eight were nonfiction. They were organized by subject – per bookshelf stack– by usefulness – per singular shelf – and then by author within that shelf. The nonfiction books used exactly six entire bookshelves, front and back.

One thousand four hundred seventy six were fiction. These were organized by time period, classical to modern, quality, and author. They used another four bookshelves, also front and back, but the last was only filled halfway down the last side.

Two books lacked titles. They were bound journals – diaries of an Arcangelo ancestor. As autobiographies, they could have been put in the nonfiction shelves. However, as the ancestor had evidently been completely mad and nothing they wrote had any basis in reality, they were currently located on the bottom shelf of the fiction section.

Worick knew this because he had been the one to arrange them that way.

He had read five hundred and fifty five fiction books (because it seemed like a good number) and then started alternating with nonfiction books so he wouldn’t get bored with a routine. To date he had read seventy six of them.

Worick knew this intuitively like he knew that the sky was blue in summer and the grass was green when it was healthy.

He also knew that he could, if so inclined, recite every word from those seven hundred and seven books by heart. It would take him quite a while, but he could do it.

He could tell someone that the, say, thousandth word in the first three books he’d read in the library over a year ago had been, in order, _him_ , _space_ , and _lemon._ He could say what page that word had been on and where on what line it was located.

Everything he saw, he remembered. Everything he heard, he remembered.

Worick hummed quietly and muttered, “Eidetic memory is an ability to recall images, sounds or objects in memory with high precision for a few minutes without using mnemonics. It occurs in a small number of children and is virtually non-existent in adults. The word eidetic comes from a Greek word meaning ‘seen.’”

He paused. “At least, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Which has naturally never been wrong. Or corrected.”

Besides, Worick didn’t have _that_ either. But it was the closest thing to whatever he was that he had found to date, so he pulled it out to consider from time to time. Either Worick was some derivative of it, or the definition was flawed.

He trailed his fingers along a row of books, and paused. Languages. That might be fun. It’d certainly eat some time. His thumb brushed titles as he thought. French. Spanish. German. Russian. Sign Language. What on earth did they have that for?

Worick shrugged. Maybe later. His reached up and over to the shelf dedicated to mechanical know how and pulled down Volume Five: Circuitry and Wiring.

He had plenty of time after all. His father might go too far and beat him to death one day, but at least the library would still be here. Somehow, the idea was encouraging.

He cracked the hard spine and began to read.

It was just another day by himself.

Rather typical, really. Alone, surrounded by ink on paper. Thinking more than speaking.

He had no notion at all that the rest of his life would be so very different. He wouldn't ever be sure whether it was his choice or not, whether it was something he wanted.

But. Without a doubt, he knew with version he preferred.


	3. Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nic's sense of humor (when he finally develops one) is questionable.

**Criminal: A**

**Nicolas Brown**

**Record: mugging, murder, blackmail**

Nic thinks it’s hilariously funny, can’t stop smirking as he taps the window of the adjacent interrogation room to get Worick’s attention so he can laugh at it too.

Nic looks like a killer in his mug shot.

He always has, even when he was younger and stupider, because that’s exactly what he is. It figures that everyone who sees him knows it like it’s stamped across his forehead.

It may as well be. He wears it already, a brand around his neck. Tagged. Murderer. Monster. Freak.

Nic doesn’t care. The truth hasn’t bothered him for a long while and all the slurs in the world won’t make a difference.

In the picture Nic is filthy, dirt smeared into his skin, the stench of gutter trash sticking to him so strong that even years later, in a black and white photograph, it’s potent.

Worick hadn’t saved up enough money for them to have a place yet, so they mostly slept curled together in uninhabited alleyways those days.

More obvious than the dirt is the stark contrast of blood—on his face and all over his hands where he holds up his identification.

It’s from a stupid pimp who’d seen the business Worick drew with his whoring and tried to recruit him. Forcefully.

Nic had stopped him. Forcefully.

The stupid pimp had become a stupid _dead_ pimp and that had been the end of the matter for them.

The Nic in the picture is showing his teeth, less out of humor and more of a subtle animalistic threat. He never used to smile, before Worick, but now Worick has Nic and Nic kills for Worick and he smiles a lot more now.

He is content, killing for Worick, with Worick. Why not smile?

His past self is clearly aggravated—Nic remembers making the cop very nervous and it’s a fond memory—at being hauled into the station in the first place and then being separated from Worick while they were processed.

Nic hadn’t been best pleased with that development. How is he supposed to protect Worick if he can’t see him?

Worick laughs now as Nic had known he would, face lively and bright, and Nic feels a private thrum of satisfaction beneath his amusement. He did that. That laughter is for him and it is _good_.

He doesn’t have to force it at all when he grins back.


	4. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nic has never understood the idea of a conventional home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's going to be a Gansta anime?!?! Does everybody know about this? Am I the only one losing their mind because I AM SO READY.

**Criminal: D**

**Worick Arcangelo**

****Record: mugging, prostitution, blackmail** **

Nic gets a copy of Worick’s wanted poster with little fanfare. He swipes it off the wall (again) and tucks it into his pocket, more subtle this time so the cops don’t see. All Nic needs to do to keep it is make sure Worick never finds out.

He likes Worick’s poster better than his own, which is Worick’s personal favorite, and it always makes him grin when he looks at it, a slight curve of lips and a brief flash of teeth.

For all that a two-dimensional image can, it captures Worick perfectly.

Younger Worick stands with a slouch, shoulders relaxed, like he owns the world and knows it, like he’s just waiting for everybody else to realize it too and start groveling at his feet. His head tilts back derisively, so he can look down on the taller cameraman as if it’s his god given right.

He’s smirking; that infuriating smile that says _I-know-something-you-don’t-know-and-guess-what-I’m-not-telling._ Something in the way his eyebrows are raised and his eyes narrowed with deliberately ill-hidden mockery suggests the addition of, _well-maybe-if-you-beg_.

Worick oozes such blatant confidence that it takes a third glance after the second to see the details that give him away, that strip him of his believable mirage of kinghood.

His clothes are poor, unraveling at the seams and several sizes too big for him—they’d scavenged them from the trash—the ends of his sleeves are rolled up several times and sagging from his wrists, making him look painfully thin. The way his hoody slides off his shoulders too does him no favors.

Worick’s hair is mussed and unwashed, a trail of dried blood almost completely concealed by the fall of his bangs—his head had been slammed back against a brick wall hardly an hour earlier—and his face is bruised.

His neck is exposed, revealing telling bruises in misshapen circles, put there by greedy desperate woman willing to pay for young flesh.

Still, nothing about Worick looks hurt—Nic knows better than to believe this particular illusion—and he appears entirely comfortable, not at all like the person who’d fought bitterly, panic in his eyes, to stay by Nic’s side until some idiot cop held a gun to his head.

He looks like an arrogant whore, more bravado than strength.

(This is a trick and a lie.)

He doesn’t look like the savagely hating child who had once confessed his desire to burn the world down with everyone in it.

(Nic shares the sentiment from time to time.)

He doesn’t look like the kind (naïve) boy who’d saved Nic’s life, who had been patient and gentle as he taught a worthless twilight to read and speak with his hands.

(Worick hides so well sometimes it makes Nic wonder what’s even real about him. But, of course, he doesn’t care about that. Worick is Worick after all, whoever he chooses to be that day.)

He looks like home and family.

Nic will never tell him.

But he will look at Worick’s picture and smile because he belongs to Worick. And, occasionally, in the very calm moments, and never said anywhere but the depths of his own mind, Nic thinks that maybe Worick belongs to him too. Just a little.

It makes his smile wider, a bit scarier, that idea. Owning Worick. Nic likes it. Likes it a lot.

He’ll never breathe a word about it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.


End file.
